Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for cooling heat-generating components in a computer system.
Background of the Related Art
Computer systems are being designed and built with an ever increasing number of heat generating components. Given the limited footprint of most computing systems, a continuous increase in the number of heat generating components creates challenging heat dissipation issues. These issues if not dealt with adequately can harm the structural and data integrity of the computer system, making the effect felt both at a system and component level.
Most electronic packages or nodes in a datacenter are housed in chassis disposed in racks. Traditionally, these nodes have been cooled by forced air cooling using air moving devices, such as fans and blowers, selectively disposed somewhere in the environment as to allow optimum air flow. These air moving devices are often designed to displace hot air away from the components by creating parallel air flow paths that circulate through the chassis and rack. Air moving systems may take the form of a computer room air conditioning (CRAC) system, a chassis fan system, or fans in an individual node or group of nodes.
As the density and performance of heat generating components increases, air cooling solutions are becoming more prohibitive and costly. Although attention has been directed to air cooling of high heat flux microprocessor modules, an increase in overall system performance also requires large amounts of on-board memory with increasing power consumption.
In recent years, direct or indirect water cooling has become a more attractive option for the designers of computing systems. Water cooled systems have been shown in some circumstances, such as large data centers, to consume less energy than a similar air cooled system. However, a water cooled system typically requires a significant up-front investment in infrastructure to support water cooling.